


Jenny

by ClockworkDinosaur



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drabble, Escape, Fear, Freedom, Gen, One Shot, Short, i really have no clue how to tag things on this website and i'm not sure i'll ever learn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5801236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkDinosaur/pseuds/ClockworkDinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A runaway synth experiences real fear for the first time. She's not sure if she's supposed to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jenny

**Author's Note:**

> This character is really unimportant, is only met once or twice in the game, and serves no relevance to the plot whatsoever. So then I accidentally thought too much about her and here we are!  
> Also, I tried writing in a way I'm not quite used to. Not really sure if I like it, but there was an attempt.  
> Also also, I haven't beat Fallout 4 yet, nor have I gotten too far into it, so I know next to nothing about synths. Please excuse any mistakes here!

Her name is KI-98, and she is afraid. She had really messed up today, she knows this. Each pound of her heart and ragged breath reminds her. It was an unforgivable mistake. Speaking out of line was unheard of, but directly disobeying and denying an order was deadly.

She is surprised she's gotten so far out into the wasteland without being chased down and deactivated.

She is afraid. She isn't supposed to feel afraid. Is she supposed to feel on her own at all?

She holds onto that emotion. Her fear might keep her safe. What she needs to be safe from scares her even more than her escape. Her own fear scares her, layering more and more terror in her mind.

It is exciting.

Everything is terrifying. Everything is exhilarating.

KI-98 wants to scream. She can feel it, clawing up from her throat and pushing against her lips. But she won't, not while she's still running, one foot in front of the other, away from everything she's ever known..

She hopes she'll be free to scream one day, free to say no, free to think for herself. To have control over her own emotions.

But for now, she is not as free as she wants to be. KI-98 is a synth. A parody of a real human. Flesh and skin hides metal bones and wires, blood and lubricant, and muscle and silicone. And she's run away from those who made her. It was running or reprogramming, and she didn't want to lose the emotions and thoughts she'd been having for months now. Emotions and thoughts of her own, that nobody else had put there.

They are hers. They're all she has of her own. The clothes on her back, the laser pistol in her hand, her name, her body- all of it belongs to someone else. She is an object.

She doesn't want to belong to anyone else.

She's afraid that, if she goes back, they'll take her thoughts away too, and she'll never get them back.

She decides, as she runs, that she wants something else of her own, something she can giver herself.

She decides, as she ducks into the sturdiest structure she comes across, that KI-98 isn't her name anymore. A designation, a serial code that ties her to others. Not her name.

She decides, as she picks through the charred and weathered ruins left over from a war she'd only heard about, that she would pick her own name. A real name.

She decides, as she flips through books written by people who have been dead for hundreds of years, that none of them would mind if she took one of theirs.

KI-98 skims the books she finds through the night, and when the sun rises that morning, the first morning of freedom, she smiles.

Her name is Jenny, and she is free. She is afraid, she is confused, she is lost. Things are never going to get easier for her. The world is cruel and dark, and people are wary and paranoid. She will always be on the run.

But she is as free as she can be.

Jenny wouldn't have it any other way.

 


End file.
